Cato Street Conspiracy

The Cato Street Conspiracy was a conspiracy by British radicals led by William Davidson and Arthur Thistlewood to murder Prime Minister Robert Jenkinson and several of his Tory Party cabinet members in 1820. The Irish community in London, the shoemaker society, and other industrial workers were prepared to assist any uprising, while unrest also simmered in the industrial north of the country and in the Greater Glasgow area of Scotland. A police informant lured the 13 plotters into a trap, and they were captured after killing one policeman. Five conspirators were executed and the rest deported to the penal colonies of Australia.